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sensors are based on the previous work by Majidi et al. [10],
Park et al. [9] and Kramer et al. [12]. Here we present a new
technology for complete body motion sensing in a simple,
direct fashion with minimal computational complexity and,
more importantly, in a soft wearable garment that presents
minimal impedance to the motion of the wearer and is
robust for outside-the-lab use. The first instantiation of this
technology is presented here as soft wearable pants with
integrated soft strain sensors positioned on the three major
joints of the right leg (Fig. 2). The wearable systems ability
to detect motion was compared with optical motion capture.
Since the wearable device is constructed exclusively with soft
stretchable fabrics and polymers, it interfaces exceptionally
well with the body with the goal of minimizing the weight
and feel of the device.
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TABLE I
and extension values. A total of 29 extension tests were
P REDICTED S TRAIN OF H YPERELASTIC S ENSOR ACROSS B ODY J OINTS
conducted on an isolated sensor to determine its physical
Percentile Male Body Size
Joint 5th 50th 95th and electrical properties. The extension rate was set to the
Hip 270% 330% 380% maximum available on the tester, 25 mm/s, for every test. The
Knee 290% 400% 480% total extension was set to 100, 200, 250 and 300% strain
Ankle 130% 140% 150% for 7 cycles each. Since the sensor has inextensible fabric
embedded within the rubber, the initial length, L0 , is taken
in series with the inextensible straps to allow for manual
to be the extensible portion of the sensor and the strain was
adjustment of the sensor pre-strain which ensured the elastic
calculated accordingly: L = L/30mm. The final test was
sensor remained taut throughout the range of motion of the
to failure.
joint.
2) Joint Arc Angle Strain: The principle of joint angle
sensing is based on the change in the distance between two
points on the surface of body segments connected across a
joint (Fig. 4). As a first order approximation, the change in
length between these points can be related to the change
in the joint angle and scaled by the radius of the joint,
that is: S = r. Using this equation, and applying it to
anthropometry measures of joint radii and ranges of motion
from the literature [21], we find that the expected strains
for the sensor we present here (unstrained length of 30 mm)
can reach up to 480% on the knee of a 95th percentile male
(Table I).
attachment
Fig. 5. Photographs of the sensor being tested in extension to characterize
its mechanical and electrical properties. The sensor could reliably extend to
sensor r 300% strain.
S
strap
B. Results
1) Mechanical Response to Strain: The results of the
isolated sensor characterization revealed that the rubber has
a nonlinear elastic response and low hysteresis. In the me-
chanical response of the sensor (Fig. 6) there are two regions
Fig. 4. The change in length between two points on the surface of the of linear stiffness. At lower extension values the rubber is
body across a joint is related to the angle and radius of the joint.
fairly compliant, with a spring constant of 88.4 N/m, but after
60 mm of extension (corresponding to 200% strain) it stiffens
A total of three soft sensors were used (Fig. 2), spanning considerably to 499 N/m. This strain-stiffening effect is more
the ankle, knee and hip joints, respectively. The ankle joint commonly seen in biopolymers than in synthetics, and is due
sensor was placed posterior to the ankle joint, anchored to the constitutive polymer network strands reaching their
at the base of the heel (calcaneous) and near the muscle finite maximum extensions at the molecular scale, resulting
tendon junction distal to the gastrocnemius muscle complex, in the increase in stiffness at the macro-scale [22]. The
stretching parallel to the Achilles tendon. The knee joint sensor eventually fractures at an extension of 109 mm (364%
sensor was placed anteriorly to the knee joint, anchored at strain) which required a force of 22 N. The change in the
the head of the tibia and mid-section of the thigh. The hip stiffness of the elastic sensor indicates that it is an important
sensor was placed posterior to the thigh, parallel to the biceps design consideration for future optimization, since it would
femoris, and anchored at the waist near the iliac crest on the be restricting to have a wearable sensor that suddenly stiffens
distal and proximal ends. at certain ranges of motion. An optimized sensor design will
III. S ENSOR C HARACTERIZATION operate in the more compliant and relatively linear response
range of the strains expected for each joint. In fact, the
A. Methods predicted strains at the knee of a 50th percentile male, and
In order to characterize the sensors separately from the knee and hip of a 95th percentile male (Table I) exceed
sensing suit, they were sewn to inextensible straps to sim- not only the low-stiffness range of the sensors mechanical
ulate integration to the full suit, then tested on a materi- response, but also its ultimate maximum strain. Additionally,
als testing machine (model 5544A, Instron Inc., Norwood, there was no change in the sensor characteristics over the
MA). Extension tests were conducted on an isolated sensor. number of trials, though tests of sensor lifetime and fatigue
Resistance values were recorded simultaneously with force characteristics will be necessary in the future.
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2) Electrical Response to Strain: Looking at the nor-
malized signal of the sensor in response to strain (Fig. 7)
one can see that the sensor has very low hysteresis and no
inflection point such as those seen in the mechanical response
(Fig. 6). The lack of significant inflection points is because
the sensor response is directly related to geometric effects,
and so is insensitive to the stiffness of the material. The
inset shows the difference in the loading and unloading paths
of the sensor signal. A linear fit approximates the sensor
response very well (R2 =0.9924), and is convenient for later
comparison and calibration requirements. In our analysis we
make a naive assumption on the linearity of sensor response
in strain in order to examine the relationship of strain to joint
angle. Though joint motion is complex, we assume that the
sensor motion across the joint is linear in order to compare
sensor response in isolation directly with sensor response
when worn on the body. As expected, the sensor signal goes
to infinity at failure due to the fracture of the conductive Fig. 7. The normalized sensor signal is highly repeatable and has very low
channels. hysteresis. When the sensor fractures, the resistance goes to infinity, as can
be seen in the dashed red line of the failure test. The inset shows the tight
packing of the paths of the sensor signals. A linear fit to the cyclic portion
of the signal shows a gain (slope) of 3.1 %/%.
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participant was asked to walk at a self-selected walking speed B. Results
along a 5.5 m walk-way for 10 consecutive trials (Fig. 9).
The participant took six strides in the space of the walk-way 1) Dynamic Range of Motion: The data from the sensing
before stopping, so the first two and last two full strides suit was compared directly with the joint angles provided
where transient behavior generally occurs were ignored, and by the OpenSim model based analysis of the Vicon optical
the analysis focused entirely on the two full strides in the motion capture data. The sensor response during the dynamic
middle of each trial. range of motion tests of the joints showed greater variation
and significant hysteresis in comparison to standing trials.
Both the increased variation and hysteresis can be attributed
to the interface of the sensors to the body. Linear fitting
was for simplicity and shows that even without complex
algorithmic fitting, the sensing suit can accurately track joint
angle. The best coefficient of determination (R2 value) of
0.9680 was found at the ankle sensor (Fig. 10c), followed
by 0.9646 at the hip (Fig. 10a), then 0.9436 at the knee sensor
(Fig. 10b). It is important to note that the limits of motion
Fig. 8. To determine sensor response on the body, the participant was seen in the data are on account of the limits of the participant,
asked to sweep out the range of motion for each of the instrumented joints: not the sensor. Although the suit is designed to be adjustable,
(a) hip, (b) knee and (c) ankle.
with buckles in series with the sensors used to apply a
desired amount of pre-strain, it was qualitatively observed
that the sensor response would vary if the suit was shifted
during testing. This systematic variability can be accounted
for in future versions with redundant sensor placement, better
tailoring of the suit, and appropriate algorithms.
2) Gait Trials: To analyze the gait trials, the sensor suit
and Vicon data were fitted to a percentage of the gait cycle
(Fig. 11). The sensor suit signals were fitted to the their
respective joint angles using a linear least squares fitting
method, as was done when evaluating the isolated sensor in
extension (Fig. 7) and during dynamic range of motion trials
(Fig. 10). Qualitatively, the sensor suit is effective at tracking
the joint angles and giving a good sense of the participants
gait cycle state. The hip sensor has an especially close fit
to the Vicon ground truth throughout the gait cycle. The
knee has a good fit in terms of phase and accurately reflects
the knee angle during swing phase (30% to 90% gait cycle)
but underestimates the knee angle during the stance phase
(0% to 20%). The ankle sensor signal tracks the joint angle
least precisely, displaying an apparent phase shift as well as
Fig. 9. The walking trial had the participant walk at a self-selected speed variable gain.
along a straight path through the motion capture work-space. The top row Quantitatively, all three sensors tracked the joint angles
of images are video stills and the bottom row are the corresponding Vicon
motion capture poses visualized in OpenSim.
with mean absolute errors (MAE) of less than 8 at any given
instance during the gait cycle. The hip sensor was the most
precise in tracking, and showed a peak MAE of only 5 . The
All data from the Vicon motion capture system and the linear fits for the sensor signals were calculated separately
sensing suit were recorded separately, so the data was first for each joint and for each trial, and the fit had the form:
synchronized with a manually applied time offset for each y = mx+b, where y was the sensor signal in percent change
pair of data from a given trial. No filtering was applied to in resistance (%(R/R)), x was the joint angle in degrees
either the Vicon or sensing suit data. Next, in order to make ( ), b was the signal offset in percent change in resistance
direct comparisons between the sets of data, the Vicon data (%(R/R)), and m was the gain in degrees over percent
was downsampled from 120 Hz to 100 Hz and the sensing change in resistance ( /[%(R/R)]). The fitting parameters
suit data was upsampled from 50 Hz to 100 Hz. The sampling can be found in Table II and can be directly compared to
was done with MATLABs spline interpolating function, a the values in Figure 10. The gain of the linear fitting for the
third order function. Finally, to compare the sensing suit data sensor signals was significantly different from the dynamic
directly to Vicon, in each pair of data samples the sensing range of motion trials. The hip gain changed the least; it was
suit voltage signal were fitted to the Vicon joint angle signal 8.35 (%/) during walking as compared to 9.08 (%/) during
with a first order polynomial fit. standing trials. The knee gain was 8.63 (%/) for walking
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TABLE II
WALKING L INEAR F ITTING PARAMETERS
Joint m b R2
Hip 8.35 223 .9997
Knee 8.63 -45.1 .9922
Ankle 6.42 193 .9740
V. C ONCLUSIONS
In this report we have presented a wearable sensing suit for
lower extremity biomechanics that uses hyperelastic strain
sensors positioned to measure joint angles via applied strains.
Such a soft sensing suit could provide a useful tool for
physical therapy tasks. For example, joint range of motion
could be recorded and tracked over multiple therapy sessions
or signals from the sensors could be interfaced to a game or
virtual environment to provide an engaging experience for
the patient. The technology in this sensor suit will also be
applicable to the intelligent and low profile wearable systems
developed in DARPAs Warrior Web program (BAA-11-72);
the sensor signals will be used to inform the control of
actuators to provide joint assistance at the appropriate time
or to monitor soldier activity and performance in the field.
In future work, improved attachment of sensors to the
base layer will reduce hysteresis and improve angle track-
ing. We plan to optimize sensor dimensions for respective
joints to improve sensitivity and robustness. These sensor
improvements will be accompanied by kinematics studies
to quantitatively identify the degree of impact the suit has
on the wearer. Future work will also emphasize both redun-
dant sensor placement as well as improved positioning to
increase robustness to garment shifting. Finally, we will fully
instrument all lower extremity degrees of freedom in order to
capture not only sagittal-plane motions, but also motions in
the coronal and mediolateral planes. This full instrumentation
and the development of a sensor initialization/calibration
Fig. 10. The sensor response to standing dynamic range of motion trials for
procedures independent of Vicon will realize our goal of an
(a) hip, (b) knee, and (c) ankle (for each graph, N = 5 trials, 1 participant). outside-the-lab motion capture device.
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Fig. 11. The means and standard deviations (shaded region) of joint angles
determined by the Vicon system and the sensor suit and the mean absolute
error (MAE) are plotted against the gait cycle percentage (N = 10 gait
trials, 1 participant). The vertical bars represent regions of the gait cycle
corresponding to three still frames in Figure 9 (from left to right): Loading
Response (LR), Pre-Swing (PSw), and Mid-Swing (MSw).
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